gregmag

It doesn’t have to be a problem. You have 18-21 outfield starts each week; let’s call it 20. It’s late in the season with October coming, so guys can use the occasional day off – certainly a historically fragile guy like Mitchell and a guy who seems prone to slip into bad habits like Chourio. With Frelick out, you can go with something like Chourio 6 Mitchell 6 Lara 4 Lockridge 4 If Lockridge takes time to shake the rust off, finding starts for Lara gets even easier. The immediate problem arises if you want to keep playing Bauers in the outfield. I don’t think his recent offense justifies playing him there over a bunch of guys who can defend rings around him, but that’s me. (It would sure be nice to have the DH spot available for some Bauers and Vaughn starts.) When Frelick gets back, that’s a different conversation. But really, what are the odds of Chourio, Frelick, Lockridge, AND Mitchell staying healthy through the World Series?

This time every year, people who want to make aggressive deadline trades recite a mantra: “Prospects are just that – prospects.“ Which, first of all, is meaningless, because a thing is always what it is. But I take the point to be that you can never count on prospects to develop into anything. The unstated premise seems to be that you can always or usually count on veterans to keep doing whatever good things they did before. Yesterday I was looking for something or other and ended up seeing the MLB pipeline top 100 for 2022. It got me thinking, so I did a quick snapshot; people who know how to work with data could do a bigger, vastly better version of it. The question is, what value can you rely on getting from veterans as opposed to prospects? My snapshot was to look at the 2022 top 10 prospects and the 2022 top 10 MVP finishers in each league to see how much value each group provided between 2023 and 2026 (prior to yesterday’s games). I used bWAR because it was the easiest thing to access. Here’s what I found, assuming my math is right: Top ten 2022 AL MVP: 154 Top ten 2022 NL MVP: 121 Top ten 2022 prospects: 110 In this snapshot, the prospects were indeed the least reliable group — but not by nearly as much as the “just that” mantra implies. The prospects were also a more volatile group — higher standard deviation. But overall, the prospect group was right there with the cream of the NL and within shouting distance of the (Ohtani and Judge led) cream of the AL. Does this pattern hold for other years? I don’t know. You could also play around with the window; to me, a 3.5 year window starting right after the MVP seasons and a year after top prospect rankings seemed pretty sensible, but I could be wrong. My biggest question is what happens when you get down to, say, the 75th to 100th best prospects and veterans. Anyway, this is a quick pass at starting a somewhat informed discussion.

Those are all great cases — Cone, Verlander, Sutton. I think they meet all the criteria. The ‘82 Brewers lost, but I think everyone was ecstatic about getting to the World Series. All starting pitchers, which makes sense. At the level the Brewers have reached, you’re really trading to swing two or three postseason games. Position players and closers are far less likely to do that. I’m seeing the Skubal argument a lot more clearly, and I’m feeling more secure in my resistance to trading potential difference-makers for a bat or reliever.

I know you’re kidding, but I was actually thinking about this. There is a drag factor once teams clinch. Put it this way: My wife got me tickets to come up to Milwaukee for the final home series of the season, and I’m very intrigued about whom I’ll get to see. Unless the Brewers collapse between now and then, I ain’t seeing Miz.

(This isn’t a trade rumor of proposal, so I figured it belonged here.) The Brewers as currently constructed are highly likely to win the division and a good bet to get as far as the NLCS, given that they did so last year and are probably better now. When we talk about improving the team now, beyond maintenance changes like getting a McCullers type to eat some innings, we’re talking about getting to, and hopefully winning, the World Series. The argument that the Brewers should go “all in” at the deadline is an argument that one or more deadline trades would be substantially likely to elevate the Brewers at least from NLCS loser to NLCS winner and maybe to a championship. Has that ever happened before? Has any team as good as the Brewers already are ever made a deadline deal that you can point to and say there’s a good chance that trade lifted them from top four in the postseason to top two? I can’t think of one, but I’m miles from having a comprehensive knowledge of MLB, and obviously this question involves some subjectivity – you can never say for sure that one deadline trade does or doesn’t make the difference. But I’m curious if others can think of cases where that even arguably happened. If the Brewers embrace this “all in” strategy, it would be nice to know the strategy has worked before.

I’m watching the beginning of the game. This guy repeatedly pronounced “Made” like “Shade” until he heard the PA announcer pronounce it correctly. He identified the Shuckers as a Marlins affiliate until someone passed him a note. He called Josh A. — while he was standing at the plate — a right-handed hitter. If you’ve seen Derry Girls, he sounds like Colm if Colm was a drooling idiot instead of a blowhard. He recites payers’ names, ages, and batting averages as if he’s a captured soldier refusing to give up information.

Good god the Chattanooga broadcast is terrible. The announcer doesn’t need a microphone; he needs a seance.

A player’s expression of joy doesn’t have to be an affront or offense to the opponent. You can choose to see it that way; you can just as easily choose not to. Flipping off the opponent or yelling “In your face!” — that’s an affront. I also don’t understand why some people get worked up over one kind of celebration but not another. Contreras threw his bat, and then a half minute later his teammates mobbed him on the field while the understandably dejected Marlins trudged off. Why doesn’t that violate the “unwritten rules”?

Youngsters, please help me out – what do those emojis connote?

Five of the first six guys in Biloxi’s lineup yesterday finished the game with OPSs (OPSi?) over .900. The sixth guy is the top prospect in baseball.

Dude looked good tonight on both sides of the ball. Former first-round pick, 28, versatile, poor but not dreadful hitter in the minors, minimal MLB opportunities . . . this looks like a useful player, especially for a team whose fans recently have had semi-serious discussions about playing Andrew Vaughn or Sal Frelick at third base.

*Any* more? What if it’s, just to pull a random possibility out of thin air, 75.8%?

I suspect Hader’s perspective changed when he went (very successfully) through free agency. The arb hearing, the trade — those things were just business, the team taking care of its interests. But he hadn’t been through that stuff before (minor league trade sure, but not being traded as a big league star), and those were things I’m sure he experienced as being done to him. When he got to sign his big contract, he did business to protect his interests – he got to call the shots. I imagine that experience would cast a different light on the prior events.

I’m just reading this whole thread now, and I love how kumbayah it got once they announced Fielder and $2m as the return. Like, the one thing we prospect huggers and the tradez! crowd can agree on is that there’s no harm in dumping Jadyn Fielder and a smallish pile of Mark’s money.

Not that you’ll care, but this is where I went from “this is a serious person whom I disagree with but who’s making reasonable points that deserve serious attention” to “no he absolutely isn’t.” Too bad, because that just leaves me stuck on my original disagreement — which is basically that people who pound the table for deadline moves relentlessly overestimate how much in-season additions help in the postseason, underestimate the value of prospects, and want to pay a premium for what guys did in the past, three mistakes whose avoidance has gotten the Brewers where they are.

Minnesota is the new Indiana (said no observer of American politics ever)!

You made a strong assertion with no support or explanation for anyone who might not already agree with you. Essentially, you acted like you think *you’re* infallible — like you’re above the need for persuasion that norms of intelligent conversation place on us mere mortals. BrewerFan came back with a thorough, substantive, fleshed-out reply. The best you could do in response was bluster and name-calling. As for me, I loved the Payne pick at the time, so I’d have a hard time buying that this Ebel pick is as clearly bad as you suppose if it comes in at slot (though of course I’ll be happier if it comes in lower). The Brewers aren’t infallible; they whiffed on Brown and Wilken. But they’ve earned the benefit of more than tossed-off hot takes and juvenile cheap shots.

This is a very interesting point given the number of guys we’ve recently moved up from A+ to AAA (Adamczewski, Fischer, Ragsdale) and also from the complex to A (Frias, Martinez). Obviously those guys all deserved the promotions, but the timing also makes them all more credible trade candidates if they perform decently — which the AA guys certainly are doing. This is always a tough exercise because selling low is a bad idea (Jett), but you want to keep your guys who look good now. So you’re looking to consider trading guys (a) who are putting up numbers, (b) at positions / player types of depth, (c) whom you like less than your other prospects of that type. I would add (d) players who are (relative to your other prospects) older for their levels. Based on those criteria, I’d be most comfortable parting with Dinges, Burke, and Ragsdale (though losing Josiah would hurt my prospect-hugging heart). (Edit: O’Rae too — some team is going to love his profile.) I’d part with Fischer for an overpay. I’m having a very tough time assessing the pitchers, but I assume some other team(s) will value some of our guys at the margin more than we do.

My understanding from people who know about such things is that a broken hamate bone can sap power for a while. It therefore seems short-sighted to assume that 2026 Vaughn — a high-average, low-power lefty killer — provides a good sense of what 2027 Vaughn will look like. “Last year is last year. Who cares?,” aside from its obnoxious, smug arrogance, may be exactly wrong on the substance. If the injury matters as much as I’m thinking it might, then 2025 Vaughn may be a lot more relevant than 2026 Vaughn for projecting 2027 Vaughn.

We had some epic debates around here back in the day, when Brantley started out as an on-base / speed guy, about whether he would ever hit with enough power to have a major league career.

I’ve never gotten this logic — I’m not singling you out; most people seem to have this view. Why is hitting a home run against a great pitcher so much likelier to happen than, say, getting two guys on and mixing in a stolen base, or hitting a double and a single? Great pitchers vary in their strengths, but generally they’re good at both limiting baserunners and suppressing power. Hitting a home run is harder than hitting a couple of singles. I would think the same thing would be true against great pitchers. I always hear stats about how postseason series winners usually outslug losers, but I would be surprised if the same thing wasn’t true for OBP. The slugging comparison in a vacuum answers nothing. Winning teams generally do things that win games better than losing teams do. This is an empirical question, really a cluster of related empirical questions, to which someone who knows how to crunch the numbers should be able to provide an informed answer. I’m not that guy, but I know enough to be fairly sure I haven’t seen an informed answer yet.

Me: I really need to watch the game tonight. Brandon Sproat is pitching. Spouse: Oh, is he their best pitcher? Me: No, no. He’s like their fifth-best pitcher. Spouse: Then why are you so eager to watch him? Me: There’s a real chance that he’s turning a corner to possibly becoming their fourth-best pitcher. Spouse: Get help.

This is fantastic information. Thank you. As everyone pretty much knows by now, but your post nicely documents, the depth of our system is ridiculous. I’ve been paying enough attention that most of these stats don’t surprise me, but there’s one big exception. Given Matt Wood’s low batting average, I just assumed he was running a high strikeout rate. The fact that it’s actually 11% is bonkers. He’s laboring under a .200 BABIP. One of the classic truisms of prospect watching is don’t worry about logjams; they work themselves out. I think the Brewers are pushing that envelope at catcher (and arguably some other positions). Wood and Miller are 25. They should really be in Nashville auditioning for backup catcher duties next year; but they can’t move up because Quero is there. He has performed more than well enough to be apprenticing in Milwaukee right now; but he can’t move up because Sanchez has filled his role well and Contreras wants to catch as much as possible. It’s a great problem to have, but it is a problem, in the sense of a puzzle that needs solving.

We’re losing all these close games, and maybe we’ll lose this one, but Miz-Harrison-Woody-Drohan-Gasser with Henderson in the wings looks pretty great.

Fair. But I wouldn’t trade Payne for anyone after the top two.